On December 20, 2014, the EUSP hosted an open seminar titled “The Cultivation of a View: Paradoxes of Diderot.” The seminar was organized jointly by the EUSP’s Department of Art History and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Russian State University for the Humanities), with support from the Coca Cola Company. The seminar brought together the specialists from St. Petersburg, Moscow and New York to discuss the reception of Denis Diderot’s theoretical views. The aesthetic heritage of this ingenious thinker has not lost its explosive potential: nearly every report provoked a heated debate, which neither participants nor the audience wanted to interrupt.
The seminar began with a report by Sergei Daniel (EUSP) titled “A Cure for Boredom: the Technique of Ekphrasis in Diderot’s ‘Salons’.” Daniel’s interest lay in the rhetorical devices used to describe paintings in Diderot’s critical essays on exhibitions by the French Academy, which he wrote for Friedrich Melchior Grimm’s journal “Literary, Philosophical and Critical Correspondence” from 1759 until 1781. The absence of illustrations compelled Diderot to draw on a whole arsenal of rhetorical means in order to “exhibit” the image in words, so that the reader could assume the role of viewer. Daniel’s report focused special attention to the topos (already developed in Antiquity) of “life-likeness,” which was skillfully employed by Diderot (Philostratus the Elder’s “Paintings” served as his model). According to Diderot, if the artist follows the mimetic principle for imitating nature, he could visually inspire all the senses. It was chiefly this effect that he wanted to achieve in “Salons,” in order to “drive off the boredom” of the readers.
Sergei Zenkin (RSUH) continued on the topic of mimesis in Diderot’s own creative output. In a report titled “An Expansion of Mimesis: the Case of Diderot,” Zenkin examined “bodily” mimesis, attributable to Diderot’s character in “Rameau’s Nephew” and his reflection in the biographical legend formed around the poet Andre Chenier. An important theme in Zenkin’s report was an episode of “auto-mimesis”: the protagonist portrays his own creative attempts while simultaneously hitting himself on the forehead and uttering the phrase “I had something there!” In various descriptions of his last words before execution, Chenier was said to had made this same gesture (a sharp motion, a blow to the forehead) and the same exclamation. One would assume that Chenier was quoting Diderot’s dialogue, but it was in fact published after his death. According to Zenkin, the source from which both Diderot and the creators of Chenier’s legend could have been drawn from is the behavior of Jean-Francois Rameau himself, a famous adventurer and secular “jester.”
In her report titled “The Diderot-D’Alembert Concept of Memory and the Landscape Architectural Program of Catherine II,” Anna Korndorff (State Institute of Art History) studied the topic of historical memory and its relevance to 18th century philosophical thought. The concepts of cognition and history, traced in “A Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot” and the articles of “Encyclopédie” documented the changes that the idea of memory underwent until the mid 18th century. History began to be perceived as a process of incremental events emerging in a particular vector, with memory forming its strength. Memorial architectural programs of this time, including the symbolic architecture of Masonic lodges, paper architecture and monuments such as the memorial complex in honor of Russian victories at Tsarskoye Selo responded to this changing life. The key to understanding the program conceived by Catherine II can be found in the motto: “You can see the Church of Sophia in the frescoes”—before us stands a monument oriented toward the future, promising the return of the Church of St. Sophia of Constantinople to the Christian world.
The title of Maria Neklyudova’s (RSUH) report “‘Let Your Head Become the Album…’ A View of the Actor in the Essays of Diderot” quotes Diderot’s instruction to a young actress. The original French uses the expression “portefeuille d'images,” that is, a portfolio or packet where images could be placed. Thus, the “Actor’s Paradox” is based on the traditional descriptive paradigm of “theater-as-painting” (widely used in previous eras) which brings it closer to “Salons” and “The Experience of Painting,” where Diderot considered issues of technical methods and visual representations of plot in detail. However, in distinction from his earlier essays, here Diderot is interested not so much in principles of creating and supporting an illusion (the proverbial “fourth wall”) as in what happens within it—that is, the view from the stage into the auditorium.
In her report “The Role of Pantomime in Diderot’s Theatrical Aesthetics,” Veronika Altashina (SPbSU) shed light on the reception of Diderot’s theories of theater in the 20th century. Having analyzed treatises and volumes of remarks on the mimicry and gestures in Diderot’s plays, Altashina showed that for Diderot one of the most important components of acting was pantomime, as opposed to recitation. Unlike Diderot’s contemporaries who didn’t take his ideas seriously, figures of innovative 20th century theater such as Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera, Maurice Maeterlinck and Vsevolod Meyerhold paid great attention to them.
Olga Roussinova (EUSP/RSUH) presented a report titled “The Image of the Centaur in the Correspondence of Diderot and Falconet,” in which she traces Falconet’s work on the equestrian monument of Peter the Great (“The Bronze Horseman”) as a response to Diderot’s demands for naturalness of composition in monumental sculpture. In this light, the image of the centaur, which emerged at the end of a long-term correspondence between Falconet and Diderot (1763-1775), has particular significance. A centaur characterized by an equestrian sculpture embodies a synthesis of the rider’s acquired grace and the natural movement of an animal. This again refers us to the dichotomy between the theatrical and the natural as developed by Diderot in his writings on art theory.
In her report “Ostrovsky and Diderot: Posing a Problem,” Olga Kuptsova (MSU) examined possible evidence for the influence of Diderot’s views on Ostrovsky’s later theory of theater. An 1882 translation of “The Actor’s Paradox” is the only book of Diderot found in Ostrovsky’s personal collection. Ostrovsky’s attention to this book is evidenced by many markings, which by and large concern the text’s form rather than its contents. There is however, one very important annotation that goes to the heart of Diderot’s theory: for Ostrovsky, the integrity of a role (character) in a play was very important. Thus, from the idea of a role as an actor’s spontaneous creative work on stage, attributable to the playwright at the first stage of theatrical perception, Ostrovsky moved toward the idea of integrity, of completeness in theater. This evolution allows us to speak of late Ostrovsky as a proto-director in an era of pre-directorial theater.
In Tatyana Smolyarova’s (Columbia University) report “‘Paradox—1922/23.’ Text in Context,” she analyzed two “revised and supplemented” editions of Diderot’s famous dialogue on the art of acting, which were released a year apart; first in Moscow and Petrograd, and then in Yaroslavl. The place of Diderot’s text in the theatrical (and, more broadly, aesthetic) searching of the era allow us, in part, to judge an exemplar from the Konstantin Stanislavsky Library that includes his notes and commentary. Despite the fact that Diderot and Stanislavsky’s concepts of acting are seen as antipodal in many ways, some interesting similarities have been found between them. Stanislavsky singles out passages on the concept of role as an ideal “image” or “phantom” that the actor forms in his imagination, and compares acting to a “great aping.”
In a report titled “The Painting and Viewer in Diderot’s Art Criticism and Contemporary Implementation of the Theoretical and Methodological Potential of His Ideas,” Krasimira Lukicheva (RSUH) juxtaposed Diderot’s views on the painting of his time with Michael Fried’s conception of the developmental tendencies of 18th century French art. Diderot revealed new principles for organizing the pictorial space in the works of Chardin and Greuze, proving that they are formed as a new ethical and aesthetic value system and a new theory of composition that overcomes the rocaille system, turning a painting into a kind of theatrical scene. Michael Fried conceptualizes Diderot’s observations, proposing the categories of “absorption” and “theatricality”—new fundamental characteristics of viewing that help paintings to achieve a new autonomy from the viewer and from real space.
Natalia Mazur (EUSP/MGU) returned to Michael Fried’s theories in her report “Michael Fried’s Concept of Absorption: The Limits of Applicability,” which was devoted to analyzing the extremely impactful but not always effective concept of “absorption,” introduced in Fried’s book Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980). Mazur addressed several paintings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Charles-Andre van Loo in which, according to Fried, the pictorial condition of “absorption” is not only the artist’s primary goal but also a key to understanding the painting. Mazur offered their “decoding” through a context contemporary to the artists themselves. Her analysis allows her to refute Fried’s crucial thesis that the emergence of absorption is a reaction against Rococo, a rejection of the culture of ribald allusions and playful eroticism and a transition to the “virtuous” aesthetics of classicism. In fact, Greuze’s “absorption” is part of the culture of Rococo and continues its refined game with ambiguity and erotic motifs.
Oksana Gavrishina (RSUH) concluded the seminar with at report titled “The ‘Lessons’ of Diderot in the Photography of Jeff Wall.” She considered the application of categories defining the relationship between viewer and painting (absorption and theatricality, originally proposed by Michael Fried for analyzing mid-18th century artistic practices) to the analysis of contemporary photography. In his book Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (2008), Fried characterizes the work of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall—large format photographic installations in light boxes—with the term “tableau,” which could signify both a large painting and certain 18th century visual practices (tableau vivants), thereby inscribing the photographer’s work into the context of the aesthetic theory of that time. One of Wall’s themes is problematizing the gaze (as a structure of vision) and the role of the spectator as a whole.
Sofya Abasheva
